The Pink Hotel (17 page)

Mr. Wenton had been impressed by Mrs. Furman, but not too impressed. She was too young, too attractive and he suspected
anyone
who used “you-all” in the singular. His ideal Social Hostess was Ethel Barrymore and not Marilyn Monroe. But Mrs. Wenton had taken to Furman instantly, had felt that Furman understood her. It was like dealing with Aunt Di all over again. Furman had finally been hired, installed in a room somewhat smaller than Purcell’s with a bath to be shared by Mrs. Conyngham (who, for all her airs and graces, was not always too fastidious about—well—
little
things) and assured of three meals a day and plenty of people to love.

Furman had been glad to be Social Hostess, have a job, when the season finally came around. She had her unemployment compensation, of course, but she still remembered St. Brighida’s.
Ad astra per aspera.
Furman managed somehow to be always gay but the maddest, the cutest little old trick with men, and, remembering Aunt Di, wonderfully understanding with middle-aged women, even if she did cry alone at night when her feet hurt, thinking of little Donnie, the unreason of men. There was always a lot of dowlin’ men around, but most of them were stubbornly attached to another woman. Furman’s mind idled over the eligible men at the hotel. Pu-uh-cell and that funneh little old Misteh Math-eh and Misteh Stu-uh-h-h-t. There weren’t so many really.

Misteh Stu-uh-h-h-t now, was a sweet little old thing, real befoah-the-woah rich. Furman’s mind stopped idling, picked a card, a small, engraved white one.
Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Sturt, III
Furman’s mind read, testing it absently with her forefinger.

Furman lay back on her bed and kicked off her pumps. She wouldn’t think about T. J. Sturt, III right now. She would coldly blot from her mind his big, foreign car, his apartment on Fifth Avenue, the famous old Sturt house in Southampton, his annual forays abroad. Duty came first. She’d think about the Christmas festivities at the hotel—Mr. Wenton as Santa Claus, the big tree, the carolers, those nay-asty reindeer. She’d think about. . .

The chaste white card in Furman’s mind was reassuringly rich under her finger tips, gave promise of the not impossible sweet dignities of wife.
Mrs. Thomas Jefferson Stu-uh-h-h-t, III.
“Lauveyou, lauve you, dowlin’. Honeh dowlin’,” Furman sighed.

711

Purcell was very tired, now that he had time to think of it. Mather had hired a boat last night, and the four of them had gone putt-putting around Calaga Creek. The whole thing had been as wholesome as a toasted marshmallow, but it had been late when they reached their separate beds. It took so damned long, these days, to say goodbye.

He called the Executive Suite but the line was busy. Mary was a wonderful girl, he told himself. He’d send her the flowers, but he’d send them some other time. Mañana, maybe.

After all, he’d see her in a couple of hours, but right now that seemed like a long time. They were going to Ruby Foo’s and eat egg roll. It had come out last night that neither of
them had ever had enough of the stuff. With English mustard. No Chicken Sub Gum. No Lobster Cantonese. No Moo Goo Gai Pan. They’d eat egg roll until they never wanted to see it again and finish off on almond cakes and tea. Afterwards they’d go to a movie, maybe drink a little beer, they usually did.

What a sweetheart Mary was, what a honey. Purcell told himself that essentially he’d never been a body snatcher. He was a one-woman man, and he enjoyed, solemnly, the sunny satisfaction of a good husband. He hadn’t looked at a babe for a long time now; he’d been faithful to Mary, and by God, he’d stay that way once he got around to asking her.

It had been a very rough day all around though, so it was a good thing that he had his health. Things had started to happen as soon as he came on duty and they had kept right on happening through four o’clock, his relief.

The phone had started ringing before he got his tie tied, and he had found himself suddenly in an ambulance with old Mrs.
Goodenow and double pneumonia. Mrs. Goodenow’s face had been a parchment mask, her breathing had been noisy and querulous, and she had picked at the coverlet and fingered the blanket until he had held her hand just to keep it quiet. The hand was hot and dry and yellow, twisted with arthritis but capable of sudden strength. Christ, was he sick of old ladies. It would be a holy miracle if he didn’t end up as queer as J. Arthur.

Still, it wasn’t the poor old woman’s fault. She had probably just got a little too close to her flinty old bastard of a husband. If Mr. Goodenow had a heart, which was doubtful, it was probably as cold as a piece of dry ice, enough to throw a chill into anyone.

Take it all in all, it was a break all around for the old lady, even in a semi private room. At least she’d get three squares a day at the hospital, her very own too, and double pneumonia must be a nice little change after Mr. Goodenow’s sniggery laugh, his pound-wise penny pinching.

Miss Libya Hall had dropped a pear-shaped emerald down the drain, the Mellotts had lost Chiang temporarily in a maze
of concrete fire escapes, and an unidentified black-haired woman had been found in diabetic stupor in the bathroom of one of the two-bedroom-parlor suites, following an early morning check-out.

Purcell lunched in the bar. Without people, without Zack and Mack’s little ivory pianos, the room was about as cheerful as a funeral home, but it was quiet and the lady in the bathtub had really got him. “. . .
He said, ‘She hath a lovely face. God, in his mercy, lend her Grace, the Lady of Shallott.”
He had been gibbering when Phil had given him a double Gibson in a water glass, but that had put the roses back in his cheeks again.

He had eaten something and had a pot of black coffee, but before he had finished his second cup he was back in circulation. T. J. Sturt, III was still on brandy, and he had got hold of a Bronx telephone book and was calling everyone in it whose name began with a B. The Third was methodical though, he called the desk first to see if they were registered, and between while notified local fire departments of blazes of mysterious origin.

Still wearing the pink Lastex girdle and the bouquet of yellow Shasta daisies, the Third made occasional brief forays into the halls, inviting all comers to luncheon and offering them fruits in season, a plethora of lovely girls and Recitations from McGuffey’s Reader delivered in person. “Who killed the Chippie?” he had demanded. “See, here it lies, the life gone out of its once bright eyes,” and then he had begun to cry.

The Third had sat down cross-legged in the middle of the room, still crying, his lace Lastex girdle riding up, the Shasta daisies drooping forlornly. “Not an hour ago, it saw the sun, but now, poor thing, its living’s done.” He had fallen asleep abruptly on “I saw a boy with a pebble sling, and now I find this poor dead thing,” when the house doctor arrived and gave him a shot in the arm.

Purcell filled the pitcher on the Third’s night table with water, left a glass and a package of cigarettes beside it. He and the house doctor lifted him onto the bed, closed and
locked the door. The needle ought to be good for nine hours, maybe ten or twelve. When that wore off, the house doctor could give him another one. The Third had come South for a Test, and, by God, they would see that he got it.

Coming right out flatfooted and popping the question was quite a hurdle, hard to do, when he’d evaded it for so long. He’d devoted the best years of his life, as they say, to staying single, but he was giving in fast now. Twist my arm, Mary.

This kid is headed for that little vine-covered cottage, that second mortgage, that small solitaire. He could see people eying the small solitaire, hear them saying “Very neat” because they couldn’t think of anything else to say about it. “Very neat.” He had said it himself when what he’d really meant was “Very small.” He couldn’t swing much more than half a carat either, unless a blood bank somewhere decided to pick up its option on him.

He’d like to give her a piece of ice the size of the pond in Central Park, wrap her in sables.
Very neat.
Purcell was suddenly more tired than before.
Very neat.
It was five o’clock, and he headed for the bar.

1406

Old Dr. Anna Pomery straightened up painfully. She was a Victorian and she believed in God, but she had just performed her first criminal operation, and like all criminals, she was engaged in destroying the evidence.

It was a desolate, forbidding stretch of beach that she had chosen, pocked with dunes and infested with land crabs. The wind off the ocean was cold, but the night was fine and clear.

She knelt awkwardly again, sprinkled lime over the foetus and the bloody newspapers and covered them with a large, flat stone. She shoveled sand back into the hole with her good hand. It was all slow work because she didn’t have much use of her left hand and arm. She could move her fingers a little and she had trained the hand to perform certain functions, but it wasn’t much good except as a weight or a lever.

Old Dr. Anna rose uncertainly and took a deep breath, a careful look around for the beach patrol. It had been a dirty business and she was glad that it was over. Sand grated in her shoes and she looked around again for the beach patrol, but she supposed that she was safe enough; nobody paid any attention to an old woman.

Dr. Anna wiped her face, her hands, on her underskirt, picked up her instrument bag and started back, her left foot dragging a little with every step. It was ten or twelve blocks back to the hotel and she was very tired; it had been a long, exhausting day.

She had broken her Hippocratic oath, but she didn’t know what else God would have had her do. It had been a wrench, though, for all that. She had brought so many babies into the world that it had been hard to turn her thoughts any other way.

“To give no deadly drug and not to commit abortion, to keep inviolate the professional secret and to seduce no member of the household where called to visit the sick. . .
.”
She had kept all her promises faithfully and well.

Oh, she had helped girls before, delivered their babies and placed them for adoption, given them money, but Cora May had refused to take her money, and none of the legitimate abortifacients had worked.

She had dosed the girl with ergot and quinine and castor oil, but they had no efficacy against such a strong constitution. Cora May had been a farm girl before she had left home and done hotel work; she could have pulled a plow for nine months and fallen downstairs every day without miscarrying.

Dr. Anna didn’t suppose that she would have had the moral courage to be guilty of criminal practice if circumstance hadn’t forced her hand. When she had found out that Cora May had made a bloody mess of herself with a buttonhook, Dr. Anna had naturally put her to bed and examined her. And after that she had kept going, instinctively knowing exactly what to do.

She let herself down slowly on a curb and emptied the sand out of her shoes, then heaved her gaunt old body erect and brushed a little at the wrinkles in her skirt. After all, she was closer to this than she had been to any of the others; she saw Cora May, red-eyed and tearful, every day when she made up the room and she loved young girls, liked to look at them, touch their soft hair. You might say that barring the difference in age and station, Dr. Pomery and Cora May were old friends by now, in addition to the compassion that sheer animal helplessness had always evoked in the old doctor.

Girls in trouble were an old story to Dr. Anna, but her excitement at having a case of her own again, a patient dependent upon her, mounted. She was an old woman now; had had no active practice for five years and her left side slowed her down, but she still knew the inside of a woman as she knew the inside of a cup. She’d like to see any of these young cubs do a prettier job. She puffed a little in satisfaction, professional pride. This was like the old days.

Her thoughts were punctuated by the pound and dash of the surf, the stiff, taffeta rustle of the palms. The young fellows had to have their chance, she told herself; she herself had come almost full circle, couldn’t live forever.

She was the beginning and the end of an era, she supposed. Cora May would probably be the last case she’d ever have. She would go back to reading her medical journal, to giving away free samples, pepsin compounds and fruit salts, salves for boils, specifics for eczema, headache and influenza tablets, suppositories, dried milk preparations, fish oil. She would be dead five, ten years, she supposed, before the drug houses took her off their mailing lists, and in the meantime she would wait for her end in reasonable content, as a child waits through the friendly dusk for sleep.

I swear by Apollo, Physician . . .

“Yes, maam, and he seemed real nice.”

. . . by Aesculapius, by Health, by Panacea. . .

“Quiet and well spoke.”

. . . and by all the Gods and Goddesses, making them my witnesses. . .

“Hit come down cool, so I wear my new red fox chubby.”

. . . according to my ability and my judgment. . .

“All tore, seem like hit was that red fur he was really after.”

. . . this oath and this indenture . . .

Dr. Anna had thought that she could not bear the girl’s dreadful, silent weeping any longer, felt her gray old strength diminished by it. The spectacle of pain still offended Dr. Anna.

Similarly, I will not give to a woman a pessary to cause abortion . . .

“I done everything but yell, but there wasn’t nobody that could of come anyways and I was terrible ashamed.”

. . . but keep pure and holy both my life and my art. . .

“Yes, ma’am, a shoutin’ Methodist. Trash like that there, I don’t want no part of.”

. . . I will not use the knife, not even verily, on sufferers from stone. . .

Cora May lifted her heavy braids and disclosed a bald patch. “My hair. Tore out right by the roots. I don’t want no baby like that man’s,” she concluded wretchedly.

I
have done those things which I ought not to have done, and I have left undone those things which I ought to have done—
Yes,
she had done an ugly thing, but considering all the circumstances, indifference was not to be condoned either. There were sins of omission and of commission.

She could have kept her own skirts clean, remained aloof, but in view of all the pitiful facts, the buttonhook, her conscience would have been uneasy either way.

Have mercy upon me, miserable offender
. . . A love child was usually a cut above the average, but from what Cora May had told her, the foetus certainly hadn’t been that.

Cora May wasn’t particularly intelligent. She’d had no chance, from back yon in the hills and piny woods as she was, but it seemed suddenly to Dr. Anna that Cora May was right: there were more than enough monsters in the world now. Monsters that were real nice, Monsters that were quiet and well spoke.

Dr. Anna sighed. It seemed to her that if the Good Lord
wanted people to be better than they were, He should have created them in His more exact Image, made it a little easier for them.

She was nearing the hotel now, and she straightened herself, assumed .dignity in the cloak of her profession. The human animal,
Praise Be,
was the only species that could breed a race horse out of a jackass. She looked up at the stars, the dark translucence of the tropic sky. There were a lot of things she didn’t understand.

Dr. Anna straightened herself again for her walk through the lobby to the elevator, gripped her black bag. She was an old scarecrow, she thought as she pushed the bell, looked up at the big gold clock. Ten after ten. She had made pretty good time at that.

For a moment, Dr. Anna had thought dizzily that the clock was smiling down at her. It was just the position of the hands, of course. French or Italian. Florentine perhaps, she supposed, and a handsome piece at that. The painted innocence of the cherubs made her a little sick though, and she turned away her head, remembering the foetus. “Too florid,” she said aloud as she entered the elevator.

The operator snickered a little. “What floor, please?” he asked blandly. “Fourteen!” she snapped, not that it was fourteen, she had counted the floors. A morbid fear of the number thirteen,
triskaidekaphobia.
And at her age she had earned the privilege of being a little absent-minded if she wished.

Dr. Anna opened the door of 1406 with her key, closed and locked it behind her. Cora May regarded her silently from the bed, her eyes large in the pallor of her face. “Are you all right?” the old doctor asked.

“Yes, ma’am,” Cora May said and then, remembering her manners, “Yes, thank you, ma’am.”

The old doctor was very tired now; her heavy old bones sagged in their loose garment of flesh, but she took Cora May’s temperature, changed her bloody pads. She’d done a good job: she didn’t think there would be septicemia in spite of the buttonhook.

“Can you sleep now?” she asked. “Want me to give you a pill?”

“Yes, ma’am,” Cora May said, “I mean, no, ma’am. I kin sleep. I don’t need no pill.” She caught Dr. Anna’s old hand suddenly and kissed it. “You’re a real good woman,” she said.

A warm, sweet current of pleasure swept through the old doctor: she could almost feel it in her cold left hand, her dead left foot, as she washed, adjusted the shade, put out the light. “Good night, child,” she said to Cora May as she lowered herself down into a chair, pulling her wooden old body into position with her good right hand.

“And therefore with angels and archangels, with Thrones and Dominions, and with all the heavenly hosts, we sing a hymn to Thy Glory,” she repeated to herself, patted Cora May’s arm, took her hand, and sighed.